Recent image output apparatuses typified by an ink-jet color printer are becoming high in image quality. An increasing number of image output apparatuses can make a print equivalent to a photo obtained by photographing an image using a silver halide film and printing the image on a photographic paper sheet, using, particularly, a paper sheet dedicated to photo output.
Some of these image output apparatuses can print data on the entire surface of each paper sheet (so-called borderless printing), and output quality closes to that of a photo obtained using a silver halide film. The improved functions, low cost, and convenience of a digital camera or the like are promoting a shift to digital photos.
However, in outputting a digital image using an image output apparatus, it is difficult to manage the output result without additional information including the file name, image size, photographing date and time, and the like of the digital image data. In the case of outputting an image on a photographic paper as a general silver halide photo, the corresponding frame number of the silver halide film (and, in some cases, processing parameters in printing) is printed on the back surface of the photographic paper, and thus, output results can be managed using such information.
For this reason, there is proposed a method of printing image quality adjustment parameters together with each digital image in printing and outputting the image (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-233920). In this method, parameters are printed on a paper sheet separate from an image, on the image, or on the back surface of the image.
In the method described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-233920, the presence/absence of parameter printing and printing location are determined on the basis of the user's designation. The method does not specifically consider printing parameters in an area other than an image. For this reason, in printing parameters on the surface (same surface) of the same paper as an image in the case of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-233920, as shown in FIG. 10, the parameters may be printed over the image.